Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Yes, the victory over the RSPCA is sweet. But let me tell you why 'sorry' is NOT enough

An RSPCA trustee once likened the treatment of farm animals to the Holocaust. Knowing what I know now, the irony of that statement blows me away.

After three years investigating the most gut-wrenching evidence showing the wholesale killing of domestic pets by the RSPCA, the word that keeps coming to me is precisely that.

In some of the heart-breaking cases I have looked into, the animals were neglected and in need of rescue.

In others, the pets were well-loved and had been wrongly seized. But the common factor was that once the RSPCA got hold of the animals, their chances of a good outcome were worse than average.

The details of their stories will haunt me forever. I am convinced that in sifting through many dozens of cases where animals have been needlessly killed, and dozens more where people have been wrongly accused of neglect, I have scratched only the surface.

In 20 years of journalism, no story I have worked on has left me so distressed. As a horse and dog owner myself, I have found it harrowing.

Mercifully, after some of the latest wrongful seizures – including the case we highlighted in this newspaper two weeks ago, of Irene Brown, whose cats were taken by the RSPCA after she collapsed of meningitis – it appears that the charity is waking up to the idea that it must change.

Yesterday’s apology to the public by the RSPCA is long overdue – and I wouldn’t mind an apology either, for the countless times the charity has accused me and my colleagues of ‘slurs’ and ‘smears’ because we questioned it.

Like those living in rural communities, I have long suspected the RSPCA is not the cuddly organisation it paints itself to be. They would never come if you called them to an injured deer. And yet they began this bizarre attempt to stop all vermin being harmed by prosecuting hunts and shoots.

It was the inconsistency that put me on edge; the hypocrisy of helping some but not all animals. And so I stood with the hunting community, who are at least honest, and am still proud to do so.

After an initial article in The Spectator, accusing the charity of acting like the FBI, I began to feel the heat. After highlighting victims such as Rick Byrnes, whose cat was seized and killed because it had tangled fur, I got my first legal threat.

I also received a strange phone call. A lawyer who had acted for people accused of neglect rang me late one night and said he needed to warn me. His words put a chill down my spine: ‘You had better make sure your dog is up to date on its wormers and vaccines. Make sure your horses are all checked daily for any kind of problem including even their manes being tangled.’

More recently, I was approached by a senior figure in the veterinary world at a conference. ‘I read your pieces. Stay safe.’

I couldn’t believe it. Was the power of the RSPCA that scary? Were the vested interests that embedded?

The suggestion that I would be targeted is almost certainly unfounded, but the climate of fear was all too real.

The more important consequence of criticising the RSPCA was that victims started to contact me in their multitudes.

Their stories were so unbelievably awful I had sleepness nights. But the problem was this: Most of these people had been convicted of horrible-sounding offences. They were labelled animal abusers by the local press. No one, it seems, ever asked where the animals were now.

And so the animals were the hidden victims whose stories were never told.

And they would have gone on being untold where it not for the truly heroic Rick Byrnes, who refused to go away after the RSPCA seized and put down his cat, Claude. And then, just as crucially, because of a case called RSPCA vs Peel, and the brave decision of this newspaper to tell that very difficult story.

Rachelle Peel was put on trial for the neglect of her horses. Her husband had been suffering from dementia, she had been working away from home, and the poor horses had fallen into a terrible state. She didn’t deny that.

She was a broken woman, thoroughly ashamed of herself. But one thing she did get right. She wouldn’t stop trying to find out what had happened to the horses that the RSPCA had ‘rescued’. She demanded every document she was legally entitled to see. And then she passed them to me, and I went through them, box after box.

And slowly, unbelievably, what emerged was that 12 horses taken away from her had been shot soon after. But the RSPCA was in court trying to claim thousands of pounds for stabling and caring for those horses. And RSPCA officers were on the stand saying they were alive and well.

I attended the trial and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I questioned the RSPCA officers outside the court and they again insisted the horses were alive.

They didn’t know that I had the slaughter forms showing each one’s grisly death.

But thankfully The Mail on Sunday did care and ran the story. ‘RSPCA shoots 11 healthy horses’ was the headline, because the 12th horse had been so poorly it couldn’t be described as fit. And in the process of being seized by the RSPCA, the poor thing suffered a broken leg. The brutality that horse encountered in its final hours still haunts me. It was loaded onto a lorry and with the others transported many hours to its place of execution.

Chillingly, when I scrutinised the forms, the so-called ‘rehoming centre’ to which the horses were taken to be shot was entitled ‘Middle Earth’. I searched the internet and could find no Middle Earth. Again, chills went down my spine. It doesn’t exist, I thought. It’s a sick joke. In all likelihood, it’s the RSPCA’s short form for the place they send creatures marked for death.

I think there must be many good RSPCA officers and staff on the ground who have no idea what goes on. But the RSPCA is like a cult in the way it keeps a lid on dissent. At times I have felt like I am up against something more akin to a religion like Scientology.

If the good people who work for the charity want to know what is going on, then I can give them a tape recording I hold of an eyewitness to the shooting of a herd of gypsy horses, who were rounded up and transported to a barn in the North of England.

The witness describes them being shot in front of each other in a scene of carnage.

I suspect the reason it happened that way is because the RSPCA do a lot of slaughter secretly. I have spoken to witnesses who describe guns with silencers being used to shoot horses in the night. There is much evidence, too, about the botched shooting of German shepherd dogs with bolt guns.

Again the irony is awful. They condemn the hunting community as bloodthirsty. I cannot stress more strongly: I have never killed an animal in my life. Yet the RSPCA, which has killed countless thousands, accuse me and anyone else who tries to question its methods, of being bloodthirsty hunt supporters who want only to bring back fox hunting.

This is not only slander, but bullying of the worst kind, an attempt to frustrate democratic scrutiny of an organisation which has become focused on its own survival above everything else.

A proper inquiry now needs to look into all of this.

I have passed on a lot of the evidence I have amassed to the Defra committee currently holding an inquiry into animal welfare.

Someone needs to look into the vested interest of other professionals too, because in the Peel case there exist dozens of invoices showing vets charging for treatments given to the dead horses. A lot of people we trust and who ought to know better, it seems to me, have had a finger in this grisly pie.

In a way, it is ludicrous that we as a society ever believed that all the many thousands of animals a year rescued are alive somewhere. If they were, then every family would have had to have adopted an animal from the RSPCA.

And is it not just a little strange that the RSPCA do not give a figure for the number of animals put down every year in its annual report, only animals treated and rehomed?

ONE problem is the RSPCA has not been accountable to anyone. Unlike the police there is no complaints procedure. Nobody governs them aside from the Charities Commission, but I had no luck when I tried to alert them. The reality is the animal police need policing.

Again, I have much unexamined evidence I would like to submit, including the transcript of a Facebook chat with former RSPCA inspector turned whistleblower Dawn Aubrey Ward, in which she describes the horror of what she had to do.

In one harrowing exchange, she describes taking a pregnant dog out the back of a ‘rescue’ centre, holding it over a drain and shooting it in the head.

I don’t think she could live with such things. In any case, we know that shortly after going public with her criticisms, she killed herself.

There are more heartbroken people. I think of Sarah Mellanby, a former employee who left the RSPCA in disgust at the amount of animals she saw killed, and set up her own cat sanctuary.

A few years ago, she was effectively shut down by the RSPCA after it charged her with neglect. It seized all 62 of the cats at her home and prosecuted her for overcrowding and alleged health problems.

Miss Mellanby, a gentle soul who I have no doubt wouldn’t hurt a fly, faces losing her home to pay the charity’s costs unless her appeal against her conviction this August is successful. But above all, she has no idea where the cats are.

I could go on.

Nothing less than a proper judicial review of all those who say they were unfairly convicted will suffice. And unless something is done to tackle the power, reach and unaccountability of the RSPCA, no pet owner is safe.

Left-wing midwives' chief as arrogant and unaccountable as a Seventies union boss

One morning last month, Britain’s 30,000-odd midwives woke up to a piece of shocking news: their entire professional future depends on Britain voting to remain in the EU.

That, at least, was the verdict of Cathy Warwick, the chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM).

In a hard-hitting statement, she claimed that ‘being in the EU underpins much of the protection that pregnant women receive’ and is ‘vital’ for the profession, arguing that the ‘economic shock’ of a Brexit vote is likely to severely damage the NHS.

Professor Warwick’s comments came as the RCM announced that it will be formally supporting the ‘Remain’ campaign – on the apparent grounds that, as she sees it, the nation’s midwives will all be ‘better off in’.

She was, of course, perfectly entitled to that opinion – though many in the ‘Leave’ camp strongly disagreed with her analysis.

Yet whether it might reflect the view of a majority of the RCM’s actual members, who each support the organisation to the tune of £244-a-year, was anyone’s guess.

Strangely, given the highly charged nature of the EU debate, Professor Warwick hadn’t bothered to ballot them democratically before deciding to take a side so publicly in this increasingly heated campaign.

Members were not even asked to decide if the Royal College, a professional organisation which supposedly exists to uphold standards of care and represent the career interests of midwives, ought to be in the business of becoming embroiled in such a partisan political controversy as the EU referendum debate.

It was a similar story yesterday, when it emerged that Professor Warwick’s RCM has decided to join forces with a motley crew of abortion activists and radical feminists by supporting a campaign to abolish legal limits on abortion.

Again, her members were not balloted on whether their organisation should support this highly controversial move. The College was unable last night to say whether the decision to endorse the ‘We Trust Women’ campaign had even been properly sanctioned by its nine-strong board of directors.

A spokesman said Professor Warwick was ‘in Scotland, her native country, for the weekend’ and couldn’t be contacted.

There was no answer at the £1.5 million home in Balham, South London, from which she commutes to the organisation’s well-appointed offices in Marylebone.

Little wonder that around 200 members of the RCM have already signed a letter to the board condemning the policy as ‘utterly unacceptable’ and stating that the Royal College of Midwives ‘does not speak in our name’.

To many, Professor Warwick, who is 63 and has been running the midwives’ organisation since 2008, is seeking, stealthily, to make her organisation pursue a Left-wing political agenda.

In doing so, she has at times behaved with the brand of arrogance and unaccountability you might expect to find in old-fashioned trade union power-broker.

Paid £155,000 a year – around five times the salary of a normal midwife – Professor Warwick certainly does not appear to have been entirely open about her formal links to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the pro-abortion charity running the ‘We Trust Women’ campaign.

The fact that she happens to be chairman of the BPAS’s board of trustees is strangely absent from the lengthy CV which she publishes on the Royal College’s website.

So too is her apparent support for the liberalisation of abortion law.

Perhaps that’s because her stance would appear to be entirely at odds with not just the view of many RCM members, but also with the traditional ethos of the College, which was founded in 1881 and has the Latin motto ‘Vita Donum Dei,’ meaning ‘Life is the Gift of God’.

Certainly in years gone by, the RCM was scrupulous about upholding the spirit of that motto. While generally supportive of the right of women to choose, within the confines of the law, it steered clear of advocating for British abortion law to be relaxed. In the 1980s, it instead argued for the lowering of the abortion limit from 28 to 24 weeks, since medical advances meant foetuses were viable from an earlier age.

During the 1990s, the College was accused of siding with ‘anti-abortion fanatics’ by backing a ban on harvesting of ovarian material from dead foetuses. Under the leadership of Professor Warwick, who is married with three grown-up children, recent years have seen creeping politicisation. The RCM’s members went on strike over pay in 2014, and last year joined a notorious TUC protest at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester which saw journalists and delegates spat on and barracked as they attempted to gain access to the event. More recently, the College has vigorously supported the junior doctors’ strike.

In 2014, Professor Warwick’s regime endorsed a BPAS campaign for there to be ‘buffer zones’ around abortion clinics, which pro-life protesters would be banned from entering. And last year, it protested against plans to tighten laws against conducting abortion on the grounds of gender.

Facebook on Thursday pulled back the curtain on how the controversial Trending Topics feature works, a reaction to a report in Gizmodo on Monday that claimed the social media giant downplays conservative news subjects.

Facebook denied that report, despite the comments made by two former curators of the site's feature.

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg took to the site on Thursday evening to say he plans to talk with leading conservatives in coming weeks.

'I want to have a direct conversation about what Facebook stands for and how we can be sure our platform stays as open as possible,' the statement said.

The story has become so big that on Monday 'Trending Topics' was a trending topic on the website.

In its own blog post, the company said a series of checks and balances - involving both software formulas and humans - ensures that stories displayed in the trending topics section aren't biased.

The post linked to a 28-page internal document Facebook uses to determine Trending Topics, after the Guardian published a similar document that was leaked to it.

Justin Osofsky, vice president of global operations, said the guidelines ensure that stories in Trending Topics represent "the most important popular stories, regardless of where they fall on the ideological spectrum".

'The guidelines do not permit reviewers to add or suppress political perspectives,' he said in a statement.

Facebook hasn't said how many people are responsible for the Trending Topics team.

The Guardian report on Thursday said the team was as few as 12 people, citing leaked documents, but Facebook didn't comment on that number.

Trending Topics were introduced in 2014 and appear in a separate section to the right of the Facebook newsfeed.

According to Facebook, potential Trending Topics are first determined by a software formula, or algorithm, that identifies topics that have spiked in popularity on the site.

Next, a team of Trending Topics staffers review potential topics and confirm the topic is tied to a current news event; write a topic description with information corroborated by at least three of 1,000 news outlets; apply a category label to the topic; and check to see whether the topic is covered by most or all of ten major media outlets.

Stories covered by those outlets gain an importance level that may make them more likely to be seen.

If a story is the lead on all ten sites it was described as nuclear, an event that the internal memo said would only happen one to three times a year, a recent example being the Brussels terror attacks.

Former curators of the trending list told Gizmodo however that there was a clear bias among some employees.

'Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending,' said one former curator.

'I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz.'

Another curator added: 'It was absolutely bias. We were doing it subjectively. It just depends on who the curator is and what time of day it is.

'Every once in awhile a Red State or conservative news source would have a story. But we would have to go and find the same story from a more neutral outlet that wasn’t as biased.'

A third curator who spoke with the technology site admitted that there were also times when a story that was not trending would be put into the feed.

'Facebook got a lot of pressure about not having a trending topic for Black Lives Matter,' they said.

'They realized it was a problem, and they boosted it in the ordering. They gave it preference over other topics. When we injected it, everyone started saying, "Yeah, now I’m seeing it as number one".'

Republican South Dakota Republican John Thune wrote to Zuckerberg demanding answers about any possible bias in the company.

He said: 'If Facebook presents its Trending Topics section as a result of a neutral, objective algorithm, but it is in fact subjective and filtered to support or suppress particular political viewpoints, Facebook's assertion that it maintains "a platform for people and perspectives from across the political spectrum" misleads the public.'

Public records uncovered by The Federalist found that Facebook employees had donated $114,000 to Hillary Clinton's campaign and nothing to her rival Donald Trump.

The Hill later pointed out however that Trump had yet to file information with federal authorities about campaign donations.

Facebook vice president of search, Tom Stocky, was among those who donated to Clinton, giving $2,700 to the Democratic front-runner last October.

Lefties are spot on, their precious BBC IS at risk... it may have to lose its bias

As I have actually been to North Korea, and lived in Russia, I feel qualified to comment on some stupid remarks by a Leftist BBC favourite, Peter Kosminsky.

Mr Kosminsky, a much-garlanded film-maker, absurdly compared government plans to reform the BBC with the control of the airwaves in North Korea and Russia.

Here’s the thing I noticed about North Korea, and which was true of all the communist states in their pomp (which I saw). Those ridiculous slogans you see everywhere, urging praise for the Great Leader, or acclaiming the Party’s wise rule, have a hard purpose.

What they say to the people is: ‘You are powerless. We can put this insulting, arrogant rubbish on the wall in 8ft letters, and you can do absolutely nothing about it.’

It is a deliberate humiliation of all thinking people. And the only thing comparable to this in modern Britain is the BBC. Here, it ceaselessly transmits material which many of us believe to be false, propagandist or contentious.

Mr Kosminsky said the BBC’s main job is to speak truth to power. But the BBC is power. Who can speak truth to it?

We are compelled to pay for it under the threat of imprisonment, it decides which opinions are approved and which are not. It can and does utterly ignore the views of about half the population.

On many occasions I have spotted clear instances of bias, complained in calm, well-marshalled detail about them, taken them through stage after stage and at the end been told – by the BBC themselves – that they have done nothing wrong.

Many of you will have had similar feelings of powerless fury as you have listened to the Corporation’s presenters, and its dramas and soap operas, despising your morals and tastes, ignoring things you know to be true and important, and treating things as uncontested fact which, let us say, have not been proven.

If you doubt this bias, then listen to the words of several prominent BBC people. Mark Thompson, the then director- general, said in 2010 that the BBC had suffered a ‘massive bias to the Left’.

The distinguished presenter Andrew Marr said the Corporation was ‘a publicly funded urban organisation with an abnormally large proportion of younger people, of people in ethnic minorities and almost certainly of gay people, compared with the population at large’.

All this, he said, ‘creates an innate liberal bias inside the BBC’. The equally distinguished John Humphrys has also said: ‘The BBC has tended over the years to be broadly liberal as opposed to broadly conservative.’

There’s no real dispute about it, and it is quite unjust and wrong. But last week’s White Paper on the BBC offers a tiny spark of hope. The BBC is soon to lose the power to be judge and jury in its own cause. If you pursue your complaint hard enough, it will go to Ofcom, an outside regulator.

I urge you to do as I shall do, and – as soon as it is in place – use this new freedom to the full. My only fear is that Ofcom itself is infected by the same establishment Leftism as the BBC.

It will have to prove me wrong. But such small changes can sometimes bring about revolutions. As much as I mistrust all optimism, I am entitled to hope. Let us all speak truth to BBC power.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

Background

The most beautiful woman in the world? I think she was. Yes: It's Agnetha Fältskog

A beautiful baby is king -- with blue eyes, blond hair and white skin. How incorrect can you get?

Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair

Enough said

A face of Leftist hate: Cory Booker, (D-NJ)

There really is an actress named Donna Air. She seems a pleasant enough woman, though

What feminism has wrought:

There's actually some wisdom there. The dreamy lady says she is holding out for someone who meets her standards. The other lady reasonably replies "There's nobody there". Standards can be unrealistically high and feminists have laboured mightily to make them so

Some bright spark occasionally decides that Leftism is feminine and conservatism is masculine. That totally misses the point. If true, how come the vote in American presidential elections usually shows something close to a 50/50 split between men and women? And in the 2016 Presidential election, Trump won 53 percent of white women, despite allegations focused on his past treatment of some women.

Political correctness is Fascism pretending to be manners

Political Correctness is as big a threat to free speech as Communism and Fascism. All 3 were/are socialist.

The problem with minorities is not race but culture. For instance, many American black males fit in well with the majority culture. They go to college, work legally for their living, marry and support the mother of their children, go to church, abstain from crime and are considerate towards others. Who could reasonably object to such people? It is people who subscribe to minority cultures -- black, Latino or Muslim -- who can give rise to concern. If antisocial attitudes and/or behaviour become pervasive among a group, however, policies may reasonably devised to deal with that group as a whole

Black lives DON'T matter -- to other blacks. The leading cause of death among young black males is attack by other young black males

Leftist logic: There are allegedly no distinctions between groups of humans, yet we're still supposed to celebrate diversity.

Identity politics is a form of racism

'White Privilege'. .. Oh yes. .. That was abundant in the Irish potato famines. ... And in the Scottish Highland Clearances. ...And in transportations to Australia. ... And in Workhouses. ... 'White privilege' was absolutely RIFE!

Psychological defence mechanisms such as projection play a large part in Leftist thinking and discourse. So their frantic search for evil in the words and deeds of others is easily understandable. The evil is in themselves. Leftist motivations are fundamentally Fascist. They want to "fundamentally transform" the lives of their fellow citizens, which is as authoritarian as you can get. We saw where it led in Russia and China. The "compassion" that Leftists parade is just a cloak for their ghastly real motivations

Occasionally I put up on this blog complaints about the privileged position of homosexuals in today's world. I look forward to the day when the pendulum swings back and homosexuals are treated as equals before the law. To a simple Leftist mind, that makes me "homophobic", even though I have no fear of any kind of homosexuals.

But I thought it might be useful for me to point out a few things. For a start, I am not unwise enough to say that some of my best friends are homosexual. None are, in fact. Though there are two homosexuals in my normal social circle whom I get on well with and whom I think well of.

Of possible relevance: My late sister was a homosexual; I loved Liberace's sense of humour and I thought that Robert Helpmann was marvellous as Don Quixote in the Nureyev ballet of that name.

One may say that the person who gets in trouble with drugs is just as dumb without them

I record on this blog many examples of negligent, inefficient and reprehensible behaviour on the part of British police. After 13 years of Labour party rule they have become highly politicized, with values that reflect the demands made on them by the political Left rather than than what the community expects of them. They have become lazy and cowardly and avoid dealing with real crime wherever possible -- preferring instead to harass normal decent people for minor infractions -- particularly offences against political correctness. They are an excellent example of the destruction that can be brought about by Leftist meddling.

I also record on this blog much social worker evil -- particularly British social worker evil. The evil is neither negligent nor random. It follows exactly the pattern you would expect from the Marxist-oriented indoctrination they get in social work school -- where the middle class is seen as the enemy and the underclass is seen as virtuous. So social workers are lightning fast to take children away from normal decent parents on the basis of of minor or imaginary infractions while turning a blind eye to gross child abuse by the underclass

The genetics of crime: I have been pointing out for some time the evidence that there is a substantial genetic element in criminality. Some people are born bad. See here, here, here, here (DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.12581) and here, for instance"

Gender is a property of words, not of people. Using it otherwise is just another politically correct distortion -- though not as pernicious as calling racial discrimination "Affirmative action"

Postmodernism is fundamentally frivolous. Postmodernists routinely condemn racism and intolerance as wrong but then say that there is no such thing as right and wrong. They are clearly not being serious. Either they do not really believe in moral nihilism or they believe that racism cannot be condemned!

Postmodernism is in fact just a tantrum. Post-Soviet reality in particular suits Leftists so badly that their response is to deny that reality exists. That they can be so dishonest, however, simply shows how psychopathic they are.

So why do Leftists say "There is no such thing as right and wrong" when backed into a rhetorical corner? They say it because that is the predominant conclusion of analytic philosophers. And, as Keynes said: "Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”

Juergen Habermas, a veteran leftist German philosopher stunned his admirers not long ago by proclaiming, "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."

Consider two "jokes" below:

Q. "Why are Leftists always standing up for blacks and homosexuals?

A. Because for all three groups their only God is their penis"

Pretty offensive, right? So consider this one:

Q. "Why are evangelical Christians like the Taliban?

A. They are both religious fundamentalists"

The latter "joke" is not a joke at all, of course. It is a comparison routinely touted by Leftists. Both "jokes" are greatly offensive and unfair to the parties targeted but one gets a pass without question while the other would bring great wrath on the head of anyone uttering it. Why? Because political correctness is in fact just Leftist bigotry. Bigotry is unfairly favouring one or more groups of people over others -- usually justified as "truth".

One of my more amusing memories is from the time when the Soviet Union still existed and I was teaching sociology in a major Australian university. On one memorable occasion, we had a representative of the Soviet Womens' organization visit us -- a stout and heavily made-up lady of mature years. When she was ushered into our conference room, she was greeted with something like adulation by the local Marxists. In question time after her talk, however, someone asked her how homosexuals were treated in the USSR. She replied: "We don't have any. That was before the revolution". The consternation and confusion that produced among my Leftist colleagues was hilarious to behold and still lives vividly in my memory. The more things change, the more they remain the same, however. In Sept. 2007 President Ahmadinejad told Columbia university that there are no homosexuals in Iran.

It is widely agreed (with mainly Lesbians dissenting) that boys need their fathers. What needs much wider recognition is that girls need their fathers too. The relationship between a "Daddy's girl" and her father is perhaps the most beautiful human relationship there is. It can help give the girl concerned inner strength for the rest of her life.

A modern feminist complains: "We are so far from “having it all” that “we barely even have a slice of the pie, which we probably baked ourselves while sobbing into the pastry at 4am”."

Patriotism does NOT in general go with hostilty towards others. See e.g. here and here and even here ("Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia: A Cross-Cultural Study" by anthropologist Elizabeth Cashdan. In Current Anthropology Vol. 42, No. 5, December 2001).

The love of bureaucracy is very Leftist and hence "correct". Who said this? "Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything". It was V.I. Lenin

"An objection I hear frequently is: ‘Why should we tolerate intolerance?’ The assumption is that tolerating views that you don’t agree with is like a gift, an act of kindness. It suggests we’re doing people a favour by tolerating their view. My argument is that tolerance is vital to us, to you and I, because it’s actually the presupposition of all our freedoms. You cannot be free in any meaningful sense unless there is a recognition that we are free to act on our beliefs, we’re free to think what we want and express ourselves freely. Unless we have that freedom, all those other freedoms that we have on paper mean nothing" -- SOURCE

RELIGION:

Although it is a popular traditional chant, the "Kol Nidre" should be abandoned by modern Jewish congregations. It was totally understandable where it originated in the Middle Ages but is morally obnoxious in the modern world and vivid "proof" of all sorts of antisemitic stereotypes

What the Bible says about homosexuality:

"Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; It is abomination" -- Lev. 18:22

In his great diatribe against the pagan Romans, the apostle Paul included homosexuality among their sins:

"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.... Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them" -- Romans 1:26,27,32.

So churches that condone homosexuality are clearly post-Christian

Although I am an atheist, I have great respect for the wisdom of ancient times as collected in the Bible. And its condemnation of homosexuality makes considerable sense to me. In an era when family values are under constant assault, such a return to the basics could be helpful. Nonetheless, I approve of St. Paul's advice in the second chapter of his epistle to the Romans that it is for God to punish them, not us. In secular terms, homosexuality between consenting adults in private should not be penalized but nor should it be promoted or praised. In Christian terms, "Gay pride" is of the Devil

The homosexuals of Gibeah (Judges 19 & 20) set in train a series of events which brought down great wrath and destruction on their tribe. The tribe of Benjamin was almost wiped out when it would not disown its homosexuals. Are we seeing a related process in the woes presently being experienced by the amoral Western world? Note that there was one Western country that was not affected by the global financial crisis and subsequently had no debt problems: Australia. In September 2012 the Australian federal parliament considered a bill to implement homosexual marriage. It was rejected by a large majority -- including members from both major political parties

Religion is deeply human. The recent discoveries at Gobekli Tepe suggest that it was religion not farming that gave birth to civilization. Early civilizations were at any rate all very religious. Atheism is mainly a very modern development and is even now very much a minority opinion

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)

I think it's not unreasonable to see Islam as the religion of the Devil. Any religion that loves death or leads to parents rejoicing when their children blow themselves up is surely of the Devil -- however you conceive of the Devil. Whether he is a man in a red suit with horns and a tail, a fallen spirit being, or simply the evil side of human nature hardly matters. In all cases Islam is clearly anti-life and only the Devil or his disciples could rejoice in that.

And there surely could be few lower forms of human behaviour than to give abuse and harm in return for help. The compassionate practices of countries with Christian traditions have led many such countries to give a new home to Muslim refugees and seekers after a better life. It's basic humanity that such kindness should attract gratitude and appreciation. But do Muslims appreciate it? They most commonly show contempt for the countries and societies concerned. That's another sign of Satanic influence.

And how's this for demonic thinking?: "Asian father whose daughter drowned in Dubai sea 'stopped lifeguards from saving her because he didn't want her touched and dishonoured by strange men'

Islamic terrorism isn’t a perversion of Islam. It’s the implementation of Islam. It is not a religion of the persecuted, but the persecutors. Its theology is violent supremacism.

And where Muslims tell us that they love death, the great Christian celebration is of the birth of a baby -- the monogenes theos (only begotten god) as John 1:18 describes it in the original Greek -- Christmas!

No wonder so many Muslims are hostile and angry. They have little companionship from women and not even any companionship from dogs -- which are emotionally important in most other cultures. Dogs are "unclean"

On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!

Germaine Greer is a stupid old Harpy who is notable only for the depth and extent of her hatreds

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

Note: If the link to one of my articles is not working, the article concerned can generally be viewed by prefixing to the filename the following: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/42197/20121106-1520/jonjayray.comuv.com/

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here